Will it pick a substitute when something is out of stock?

No. It will flag that the line cannot be filled as written and route it to a person. Substitution is a commercial decision and your ERP holds the availability data, not us.

Order Entry Automation for Electrical Distributors

What arrives on the desk

Contractor orders quoting manufacturer catalog numbers, job releases, and counter-follow-up emails confirming what was discussed on the phone.

What makes this vertical different

These are the details that decide whether an order is right, and the ones that generic document automation treats as ordinary text.

The manufacturer's catalog number is the lingua franca

Electrical customers order by manufacturer part number far more consistently than in other verticals, which sounds easier and is not: the same catalog number can map to several of your SKUs depending on packaging, and a near-identical number is a different product entirely. Matching has to be exact or blocked, never approximate.

Substitutions are a commercial decision, not a matching one

Where an item is unavailable, offering an equivalent is a judgement about the customer, the job and the margin. FrontBeacon will surface that a line cannot be filled as written; it will not select a substitute, because that decision belongs to your salesperson and your ERP's availability data.

Job and phase references drive the order's structure

Contractor orders carry job names, phases and release numbers that determine how the order is grouped and billed. Those references stay on the draft rather than being discarded as non-line text.

The Order Desk queue. Four summary tiles show orders needing attention, orders ready for the ERP, the auto-pass rate and the queue total, above a table of orders with their line counts, how many need review, and a status of Blocked, Needs review or Ready to export. — The queue, ordered so the blocked work is first. Every company name here is invented for our demo environment, and the percentages are properties of that fixture rather than a measured production rate.

What we do not do

FrontBeacon prepares the order. Your ERP stays authoritative for pricing, credit, availability, tax and freight, and a person on your desk approves every order before it becomes an import file. We do not release orders, choose substitutions, or make commercial decisions on your behalf.

Common questions

Will it pick a substitute when something is out of stock?: No. It will flag that the line cannot be filled as written and route it to a person. Substitution is a commercial decision and your ERP holds the availability data, not us.